The Verdict of Falling Ink
By @john1208
An ordinary morning grinding ink at his late master's ruined shrine shatters when thugs from the Iron-Blood Faction arrive to evict Teng Rui. Once a hot-tempered sword prodigy, his meridians were destroyed by the fiery body-refining tyrant Zhuo Kuang. With his sword path dead, Teng Rui retaliates the only way left: writing the character for 'Weight' in the air. The resulting pressure physically crushes the enforcers into the dirt. But this unorthodox Dao of Calligraphy harbors a cruel secret - it uses the cultivator's own soul as an inkwell. With exactly ten thousand strokes remaining before his existence turns to ash, Teng Rui embarks on a cold, calculated path of revenge. Aided by his fiercely loyal best friend Guo Tai - who hides a dark demonic lineage - and narrated in alternating chapters with Cai Yilan, his former rival and the sect's most brilliant sword maiden who slowly falls for him, Teng Rui plans to systematically dismantle his oppressors. When his simple paper crane outflies Zhuo Kuang's legendary sun-chasing beast, the arrogant martial world is left utterly baffled. Can Teng Rui execute the tyrant and rewrite the sect's corrupt laws before his final brushstroke drains his life away?
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